EcoGnomix

This is definitely one of those games where I would give it a neutral rating if I could. It is not terrible, but there are things that could definitely be done better. It is a roguelite where you go down into caves with your gnomes, trying to collect resources and defeat bosses. There are three different caves, each with its own unique boss at the end. In between runs, you can build a small settlement where you craft different resources, which you can use to unlock new gnomes, buildings, and upgrades to make your life a bit easier. The main thing that was missing for me in the cave exploration was some way to make runs more difficult after beating each cave, to add more replayability. Once you figure out a good combination of gnomes for each cave, you can create some ridiculously overpowered builds and just demolish everything. As for the city builder, in its current state it feels a bit unnecessary and annoying to deal with (placing buildings, connecting water, and manually collecting resources). There could definitely be more added here in terms of meaningful upgrades for both buildings and your runs. All in all, I still enjoyed my time with it, so I would recommend it in the…

Ecognomix is one of those games where I started thinking “this is a pretty decent strategy roguelike” and ended thinking “why does my laptop sound like it’s preparing for atmospheric re-entry?” Seriously, graphically the game looks perfectly average, yet somehow it managed to overheat my machine hard enough to shut it down twice during the campaign. Not during an all-night marathon either, just normal play sessions. I wasn’t fighting enemies anymore, I was fighting thermodynamics. That said, the actual turn-based combat is solid. Battles are fun, tactical enough to stay engaging, and the roguelike structure works well. The story, on the other hand, is gloriously silly, but honestly that kind of fits the vibe. There’s some grinding involved, though not enough to become painful. The “city-building” side is where things start feeling a bit too simplistic. Calling it city building is generous: it’s really more like basic base management. The fact you can demolish, move, and replace buildings instantly with zero penalty makes urban planning feel less like strategy and more like rearranging furniture because you got bored. Overall, despite the questionable optimization and lightweight ma…

Not really a city builder, not really about economics, "runs" are too short and void of "builds" to really be a roguelike, and not really about gnomish society in generally, really. But it is decent if you buy it on discount. If you like Against the Storm, you'd probably like EcoGnomix!

Fun game and rather quick play through. If you are looking to have something to kill time and not be sucked into a long gaming session, this is great.

Never Enough Chickens.

so starting off the balance and progression is iffy. unlike most rouge-lites this game isn't kind to failure or over investing into success, you are able to pull out with your earnings and if you don't or you used to much in the run itself before you did your not going to make much progress topside, actually completing the run if you can if pretty much always worth it but you need to decide pretty early in the run if you are even gonna try. 2nd issue the upgrades because the upgrade options in the run are rng with limited slot/rerolls its actually better to not unlock a fair number of them. The class specific ones aren't as bad since they only show up if a valid gnome is in the party tho if you don't see yourself using the upgrade its still better to not unlock it. I beat the game with about half untouched because I felt they'd actually make my odds worse. 3rd the balance is odd you pretty much have to take certain rations or the start of any run is dumb luck. the bats are somewhat to punishing, the baseline is rough but reasonable. However if you don't take care of the spawners immediately every single time the compounding costs will quickly kill your run making them almost uns…